


Steal You The Sky

by fideliant



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Courtship, Cultural Differences, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fideliant/pseuds/fideliant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Cause you're the one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steal You The Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daleked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daleked/gifts).



> The reason why this is only going up now and not a week and a half ago is because I'm a ninny and couldn't get this completed in time for a certain someone's birthday, so here's wishing you Merry Christmas instead, because you're lovely and deserve as many nice things as possible. Or at least any close approximations of nice things, hence this.
> 
> Title and summary are from _Neptune's Jewels_ by Mystic.

Thorin loses his shoes, one winter morning in Erebor.

“I left them here,” he grumbles to Balin, gesturing at the spot with his hands. “They were right there the night before. I saw them before I went to bed.”

Balin lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t dispute that, Your Majesty,” he says.

With a grunt, Thorin drops on all fours and looks under his bed for the umpteenth time to no avail before standing up again. It’s a little more than slightly annoying considering that the shoes in question are a rather nice pair. His favourite pair, as a matter of fact. Cobbled to a perfect fit and lined with fleece wool, said shoes have saved him many a frigid morning’s shuffle to the lavatory and back ever since the first snows fell. For a kingdom carved from metal and stone, Erebor gets accordingly inhospitable during the winter, particularly to feet and any square inch of skin exposed to the nippy cold. How in the world Bilbo gets about the place bare-soled at any given month of the year, Thorin has absolutely no idea.

“They cannot have simply vanished,” he says, turning on the spot to survey his room. “They must be in here, somewhere.”

“Erebor’s a large place,” Balin remarks. “Things do get lost from time to time.”

Not helpful at all. It’s a five minute walk to the pantry and Thorin’s toes are curling against the thought of having to endure it anything longer than two. There’s only one course of action for it, really. “Rouse the guards,” Thorin orders. He strides over to his cupboard to throw it open and peer inside. Neat piles of folded clothing greet him. His shoes could very well be hidden beneath any of them. “I want this entire room searched.” He’s not usually one for overreacting, but neither does one simply lose anything as important as well-loved footwear.

Balin fixes him with an incredulous look. “Surely you cannot be serious.”

Thorin stares back, furrowing his eyebrows. “You have a better plan, then?”

“Aye. You could always get new shoes, you know.”

Unable to help himself, Thorin balks at Balin. Replace his shoes? Next thing a dwarf knew Balin would suggest hewing out another Arkenstone from the heart of the Lonely Mountain. “Are you mad?”

Though Balin’s wry smile suggests that he might return the question, he merely shrugs and stretches his arms out in a levelled, or perhaps levelling, gesture. “It is certainly the more efficacious option as it is prudent.”

“I did not summon you here to make jokes.” With no time to lose and breakfasts to get to, Thorin scoops out one pile of clothing, followed by another, then a third, littering the floor with shirts and trousers and undergarments. “Are you going to make yourself useful or just stand there?” he barks over his shoulder.

Balin sighs again, this time with years of rehearsed patience in his voice. The roll of his eyes is nearly audible as he says, “I’ll go get the guards.”

***

Three days after his shoes vanish into the ether, the second thing to go missing is Thorin’s comb. It takes him a bit longer to figure out it’s gone, but that has little to do with his diminishing powers of observation and more so with the brutal efficiency of his attendants. Apart from his shoes and the crown jewels, most of his personal effects are easily replaced as and when needs be, though not to the extent that he’s completely oblivious as to whenever things gets moved around from time to time. It’s not like he keeps strict tabs on everything he owns, but he can’t help but pay closer attention in sore memory of his shoes, and this is how he realises one night as he prepares himself for bed that the comb he’s using seems to catch in his hair more often than he remembers.

Once he takes a few seconds to study the comb, he sees it almost immediately.

“Didn’t this use to be studded with sapphires?” Thorin asks the steward on duty, gesturing at him with it. Even in the dim light of evening, it’s obvious that the spine of the comb flaunts an impressive array of emeralds instead.

The steward bows. “It’s a new comb, sire.”

“What happened to the old one?”

“I noticed that it was missing, so I had a new one made.”

Thorin blinks at the steward, then at the comb. “You replaced it today?”

“Yes, sire. Just this afternoon. Is there a problem?”

It’s just that…well. The problem is that Thorin has approximate awareness of where he keeps certain things, particularly those he uses on a daily basis, and he knows for a fact that his comb always goes hooked on the side of the box that holds his ceremonial beads after he’s done grooming himself. Even though it’s not with the same level of certainty as he knows where he used to keep his shoes, it’s enough that he can attest to it being there when he left his dressing table that morning and also that he hasn’t touched it since then. Not that the act of losing things generally involves touching them — quite the opposite, really; he’s not an idiot, thank you very much — but still.

“It’s nothing,” Thorin says, simultaneously waving at the steward to dismiss him for the night. When the door clicks shut and he’s alone in his room, Thorin turns the comb over in his hand a few times, resolutely not thinking of his shoes, before putting it down on the dresser and frowning at himself in the mirror.

Probably nothing.

***

Thorin goes for one week without losing much else and accounts for whatever he lays his hands on to be sure. Stationery, books, keys, clothing. He does it subconsciously, or at least that’s his excuse for knowing precisely how many spare bootlaces there are in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe, and reasons that it’s a good habit to have besides. Other than that, it doesn’t do much to distract him from the fact that his new shoes don’t fit as comfortably as the previous pair did, and he doesn’t count on them being broken in any time soon, so yeah, he’s grumpy about it, but winter’s nearly over and most of his things are staying where they’re supposed to. More or less.

That is, up until Thorin comes back to his room after an afternoon-long diplomatic meeting with the elves of the Woodland Realm and discovers that his door — his bloody _front door_ — is gone.

***

It’s the work of a thief, Thorin is sure, even though he has no incontrovertible proof to support that theory. Okay, so the missing door is as big a red flag as they come, but the thing is that it makes about the same amount of sense when he tries to put his finger on the _why_ of the act as he does the _how,_ which is to say he can’t make heads or tails of it at all. Looking past managing to somehow unhinge and steal a door — a large, heavy, wooden _door,_ for crying out loud — without getting caught by any of the guards, there is no discernible purpose for the theft. Towards what end could one be working by stealing a door, of all things? A prank, perhaps; if there’s sinister intent lurking, it’s well-hidden. Could it be someone labouring to get a rise out of him? Or is that someone — assuming it is one person, anyway — simply trying to attract his attention?

Whatever the reason is, the whole affair is a mild annoyance at best, hardly worth getting distressed over even considering the filching of his shoes, and on top of that he’s not sure if the events are even linked. So he keeps his notions to himself and quietly orders a new door to be crafted, because the last thing he needs is all-out open access to his room with things being the way they are. The dwarven carpenter gives him an odd look upon seeing the empty door frame for the first time, but silence is a commodity easily bought among dwarves; it wouldn’t do to have rumours spreading, not at this point in time where all he has is self-speculation to go on.

For now, all he can do is bide his time until something else disappears, maybe wait for the thief _(thieves?)_ to get careless and slip up, and then.

And _then._

***

A drawerful of brand-new quills empties itself over the weekend. What’s infinitely more perplexing is that the parchment and inkwells in the drawer right below are left untouched, but Thorin makes the mistake of dallying about for an hour and by the time he has grown uneasy enough to check again, he’s completely out of writing material for the count. His royal seal is the only thing left in the topmost drawer, which Thorin would consider a sort of silver lining if the thief hadn’t decided it prudent to steal all of the wax as well.

It’s bordering on mental. There’s no pattern to read in the incidences besides how everything seems to vanish from right under his nose, quite literally on one occasion where his pipe gets taken _while he’s still using it_. With the exception of his door, most of the things that he loses aren’t all that valuable — not in the tangible sense, anyway — and there doesn’t seem to be any common feature about them beyond their minimal monetary value. Well, that and how it’s all Thorin’s stuff. It takes a bit of asking around to discover that he’s the only one who has been losing things to the thief, and that just makes him even more annoyed than before.

“No, I haven’t lost anything recently,” Bilbo says when Thorin queries him. The hobbit tilts his head slightly and studies Thorin, eyes tinted with a touch of concern. “Why do you ask?”

He looks…well, Bilbo looks like how he always does when Thorin’s watching or talking to him, youthful and winsome and so sincere that it leaves Thorin a little bit in awe of him. And if the feeling that never fails to bubble up in its wake is anything to go by — this bold, soul-lurching rush of affection for everything conceivably _Bilbo_ — it’s probably for the best that their living quarters are on entirely different floors of the palace altogether. No need to scare Bilbo away with a formal declaration of love or anything; on one hand he deserves some peace after all he’s been put through, and on the other, slightly less important one, Thorin wants him to stay.

Thorin clears his throat in lieu of an answer because he hadn’t thought to cook up a plausible excuse for asking beforehand, because he forgets on occasion that the only people who are implicitly allowed to fire questions back at the king are Balin, his advisors, and Bilbo Baggins. “No reason,” he manages after a few seconds of scrambling for something to say. “How…how are you, then?”

“Hm?”

“This winter,” Thorin says, aware of the fact that he’s about to launch into a full-on babble and is utterly powerless to stop himself. “It’s been a cold one, yes?”

Bilbo shrugs. “I’ve had worse in the Shire, I guess. At least the furnaces here help keep the place warm.”

“It must be freezing back where you come from.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” Bilbo chuckles, rubbing the side of his neck, and Thorin’s throat chooses this moment to go impossibly dry. He blinks and swallows repeatedly, shakes his head and swallows again, trying to get some moisture down there for the words to come through unhindered. No dice.

“I do, though,” Thorin rasps, now sorely wishing the thief could have at least waited two more days before pinching his hip-flask, blast him. “Believe you, I mean. There is no reason for me to doubt your words, Master Baggins.”

When Bilbo blushes and looks away, Thorin feels his heart go on overload for a fleeting second. It’s a good thing he’s cold and hoarse and just a little bit dehydrated, because that makes him think very carefully about scooping the hobbit up and planting a kiss against his nose. Nobody likes the feel of dry and chapped lips, after all, and king or not, he’s fairly sure that general disposition extends to enduring any measure of sour breath.

“You don’t have to, you know. Um. Call me that. Bilbo’s just fine, really, it is.” Bilbo shuffles his feet, eyes turned down at them. At this angle, the way his teeth catch and worry his upper lip is still visible, a tic of his Thorin doesn’t mean to notice every time it happens but does anyway, inexplicably. Remarkable, how everything Bilbo does is significant in relation to him even devoid of context, and more so how it always turns out to be unfailingly endearing one way or another.

“Right, uh,” Thorin says, fighting back a brief pang of longing. “Bilbo.” Saying his name shouldn’t feel this intimate, as if being on first-name terms has to mean something, as though it deepens whatever connection either of them are willing to admit they share. Not that he wouldn’t be adverse to being more plugged in to any facet of Bilbo’s pleasing existence than he already is, or the lack thereof, rather, so to speak. “Good day?”

_Good day, you blathering imbecile, it’s just a greeting, you’re not asking him a question for the love of —_

But then Bilbo smiles benignly at him, and Thorin forgets to be furious at himself, if for just that moment where he can hang on his toes and there’s nothing to misguide or interpret wrongly about the easy, convivial air that’s flowing between them. Candid and lighthearted, it’s the kind of atmosphere that fills him with warm contentment and seems to lift a world’s worth of weights off his shoulders and feels just _right_ to be standing in, how could it not. It isn’t exactly the placid mutuality of two people learning to fall in love, but it’s about the next best thing there could ever be.

“Yes,” Bilbo says, his voice soft and almost wondering. “I suppose it is.”

Much later in the day, when Thorin’s favourite nightrobe goes missing, he finds that he’s not as upset about it as he thinks he should be.

***

He broaches the topic of the thefts with his nephews, because he’s half-convinced that it’s them at first and an upfront offer of amnesty can do wonders with loosening tongues. The lead ends when Fili points out rather correctly that they were with him the whole day when Thorin’s beard trimmer vanished, though the lads are keen enough about the prospect of getting to play detective. What Thorin isn’t keen about is word of the supposed thief getting out, so he swears them both to secrecy before turning them loose, a move he ends up second-guessing as he watches them scurry away, their excited voices echoing loudly down the main hall.

His door is still there when he returns, thank goodness. The book he was reading the night before, on the other hand, isn’t nearly as lucky.

***

It takes Thorin a few more days to realise that the thief has taken a fancy to the contents of his wardrobe and, because he has the absolute worst luck in the history of recorded time, Bilbo, of all people, walks in on him while he’s in the midst of confirming this particular suspicion of his.

The only warning Thorin gets is a sharp knock on his door, then it creaks open and Bilbo’s voice floats in. “Thorin, I — oh!”

For a painful, lucid moment, Thorin considers crawling into his wardrobe, right under the piles of clothing and staying there, hidden, for as long as he lives. It should count for something that he’s got undershorts on, at the very least, but it changes nothing about how he’s pretty much bare from the thighs down and the foregone conclusion that Bilbo’s just been treated to an eyeful of partially-exposed dwarf rear end. If that isn’t enough, in a further stroke of god-awful luck the mortification fails to strike him dead outright, so Thorin works whatever decency he still has left, twisting his head slowly to make eye contact with the hobbit standing in the doorway.

“It would seem that I’ve misplaced my belt this morning,” Thorin says to him, and it shouldn’t sound so bizarre, the truth for his state of undress being what it is, but there you go. He can tell that Bilbo is making an effort to keep his gaze from wandering southward, he really does, but, well. Bilbo blinks, eyes flicking down for a split second before returning to Thorin’s face, and the creeping flush in his cheeks reminds Thorin that taking refuge in the cupboard is still a feasible option.

“Oh, er,” Bilbo says. “Pardon my rudeness. I…I didn’t mean to barge in like that.”

Thorin stands a little straighter and lifts his chin, a king once more and not some dwarfling who’s been caught in the act of streaking. “What do you want, Bilbo?” he asks, trying for a neutral inflection. As it happens more often than not, his default tone of voice turns the question low and icy as a frozen lake, and it takes all he has not to flinch when Bilbo startles and takes a half step back.

“Um, Balin sent me,” Bilbo mumbles, his voice small, fingers fidgeting together. “He wanted me to tell you that some elves from the Mirkwood have arrived. They’re waiting for you in the throne room.”

“Right. I see.” It’s the hurt in Bilbo’s expression that burns something deep within Thorin, because Bilbo didn’t plan for any of this to happen, did he, and Thorin was the one rooting around in his wardrobe with just his underwear on and the front door unlocked, so some of this is on him as well, if not most of it. “Tell Balin to inform them that I will be with them…presently.”

“S — sure. Sure thing, Thorin.”

“Oh, and uh, Bilbo,” Thorin calls out, just as the hobbit steps away.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to apologise and clarify right there and then, in fact so easy that Thorin feels all the words clump together in his throat as Bilbo turns back to face him. He’s not used to this at all, being so open with anybody, and his glaring surfeit of experience in that aspect warns him off it. Which is glaringly ridiculous, because this is Bilbo he’s talking to, Bilbo who looks at him with unshielded eyes and talks in riddles sometimes for the sheer fun of it, Bilbo who’s never lied to him past the incident with the Arkenstone and deserves so much better than what Thorin can offer, _has_ offered. There are still nights where he wakes in a cold sweat, the feeling of Bilbo’s heaving neck fading from beneath his shaking hands, and it’s enough to keep him up all the way until sunrise, wondering if Bilbo is doing the same two floors above him.

This is what he thinks of when he rolls the apology around in his mouth, over and over again, trying to push it out so as to make things just a little less messed up than they already are, and that’s not asking very much, he knows, but he can’t bring himself to articulate any of the many forms it presents itself in. He doesn’t say _sorry you had to see me like this, I swear this doesn’t happen all the time,_ or _I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to be standoffish with you, I really wasn’t,_ and he definitely does not say _I didn’t know how much I love you until I did, and now every morning when I get up I think of kissing you awake, and I shouldn’t, but I do, and you must know that I’m sorry for that too._

Instead, he says this: “Could you tell Balin to bring me a belt, please?”

The smile Bilbo gives him is a weak one, but a smile nonetheless right before it slips into a look that Thorin can’t quite figure out. “Of course,” he says, and Thorin’s insides tighten up, twisting until Bilbo’s gone and he’s free to shake the feeling loose from his bones.

***

His intent is simple, but that’s never stopped him from flubbing things anyways, so he steers clear of throwing caution into the wind and makes sure to give himself considerable space in deciding what he’s going to say before he actually makes for Bilbo’s room. He can’t exactly write any of it down — the thief stole his replacement quills the day they arrived; Thorin will find time to be peeved about that later — so he has a quiet lie-down in his chambers, staring at the canopy of his bed and brainstorming with his eyes held shut. Which is…a rather stupid thing to do, now that he thinks about it; given that a thief is on the prowl and his belongings are still going missing at an alarming rate, it’s not in his best interests to deliberately deprive himself of one sense, especially his sight, but screw it, he’s been feeling like absolute shite all day for how he treated Bilbo, and to be frank Thorin wouldn’t be arsed to give a toss even if it were the crown jewels that got jacked.

Well, maybe he’d give a toss, just a smaller one — they’re the crown jewels, after all — but that’s besides the point.

Once he’s gathered up his words and the necessary courage, he navigates between his nephews two floors up (“Don’t you want to hear about our latest leads, Uncle?” Kili shouts at his back as Thorin strides down the hall) and finds Bilbo’s room along the corridor, which isn’t all that hard — the circular door is a straight giveaway, as is the letterbox sticking out the wall next to it. Old habits die hard, Thorin supposes. He waits a minute, knocks and says, “Bilbo, it’s me,” and goes stock-still when the door slowly creaks open on its hinges.

There’s nobody there. Thorin hesitates, then pokes his head in. Still no sign of Bilbo. He lets that sink in before entering the room and closing the door quietly behind him, rotating his head to take a look around at what Bilbo’s done with the place. It’s a large room, but Thorin knew that already — it’s why he allocated it to Bilbo in the first place. He doesn’t know too much about the living preferences of hobbits beyond what he observed during their brief sojourn in the Shire, and Bag End could accommodate a company of thirteen plus one wizard, so it stood to reason that Bilbo liked his space.

A sensible assumption, as it appears. The room is nice, probably one of the best among those in the higher floors, with large windows that let in lots of light and air and give a splendid views of Dale and the skyline. Bilbo has furnished it modestly with a large, comfortable-looking bed and several instalments transferred over from his place in Hobbiton. A throw rug with a flower motif carpets the floor beneath Bilbo’s squashy armchair, and a clean tea set sits on a dresser that’s been pushed up against the wall. Across from him a fireplace lies cold, but the nearby poker and coal bucket promise an entire night’s worth of warmth.

Everything about the place gives off a sense of homeliness that seems to draw Thorin in, compelling him to laze the day away. It’s partly why he’s much less reserved with snooping about the place despite a nagging sense of propriety; it doesn’t feel proper to be intruding like this, not one bit, but he’s always been bad with temptation and right now he can’t resist taking the opportunity to learn a bit more about Bilbo, even if it’s as indirect as a line through the things he owns. The folded robe on his bed attests to his tidiness; a mounted Sting on the wall above the dresser boasts a parable of adventure and courage. Thorin runs his fingers over the chest that Bilbo’s put in one corner and smiles to himself, thinking of the time he saw the hobbit lugging it all the way up from the treasury and the gratefulness in his eyes when Thorin had stopped to offer him a hand.

He rubs his thumb against the top of the chest, where Bilbo’s had his name engraved in gold, and sighs. He should get back to looking for Bilbo, really, while he still has the apology rehearsed and ready, and as Thorin’s about to leave, something under Bilbo’s bed makes him perform a double-take. A corner of something…large. Made of polished wood.

Huh. Driven by curiosity, he moves to the side of the bed, gets down on all fours to see what it is, and feels his mouth fall open sideways on its own accord. It’s his door wedged under there, its metal hinges still attached. Thorin blinks repeatedly, backpedals a little bit. No, he’s not seeing things — that’s his door, real and wholly pristine apart from a fine coating of dust on the woodwork. He slides his gaze lengthwise along the door and is given another rude shock when he sees his shoes — the ones he never stopped mourning — propped neatly against the wall at the far end.

Dazed, Thorin has to sit back up before his mind starts working again, and even so he just sits where he is on the floor with his heart pumping furiously and no sensation in his fingers. Before he can stop himself, he’s dragging himself over to the chest in the corner without really thinking and throwing the lid back to open it. He finds no treasure inside, just books and quills and an entire inventory of things that Thorin’s been losing the past few weeks. There’s his pipe sitting on top of his nightrobe, which has been folded just as carefully as Bilbo’s own, and then next to that is his unfinished book and an all-too-familiar comb with sapphires inlaid in the metal.

It takes a surprisingly short while to identify everything inside the chest, after which he goes over it a second and third to be sure, and once Thorin’s beyond doubt that all of it is his, a lump has formed in his throat and he can’t swallow it away regardless of how hard he tries. His first reaction is disbelief, but that passes quickly and gives way to anger — how dare Bilbo, how _dare_ he — before it’s gone too and only the sobering hurt of betrayal remains. There has to be a good reason for this, there just has to, but Thorin can’t imagine for the life of him what it could possibly be, can’t fathom what he’s just confirmed against what he always knew about Bilbo, or what he thought he knew, rather.

He wants to believe it isn’t true. Some small part of him regrets ever entering in the first place, because now that he’s in Bilbo’s room sitting on Bilbo’s floor with his stolen property in Bilbo’s chest, he’s at a complete loss what to do. If he confronts Bilbo with this and demands an explanation, there’s no likely outcome that doesn’t involve either a prolonged stay in the dungeons or a lengthy banishment from Erebor. It’s the last thing he wants to happen, the law of the land be damned; what’s the point of being king, really, if he didn’t have the authority to pardon the infrequent crime of passion or two?

But…he can’t just ignore this, not when the chest is half-full with his things and Thorin sees the brass candlesticks that were taken from his mantlepiece the day before in there, and for a fleeting, vengeful moment, he finds himself hating Bilbo for having put him in this situation all over again. He’d handled the affair with the Arkenstone exceptionally poorly, had been grateful for the god-given chance to set things right after it was all over and done with, and now look at him. He’s never felt so helpless in his life, or pathetic for letting this happen, and it churns in his gut until he has to look away.

All the same, when Thorin does pick himself off the floor to leave, he opts not to take back any of his things. Before he goes, he is sure to replace the lid on the chest. Just in case.

***

“It’s Bilbo,” Thorin says apropos of nothing at lunch. He slumps into the unoccupied seat next to Balin, resisting the urge to rest his forehead on the table in front of them.

Regarding Thorin mildly, Balin swallows his food before speaking. “Mind telling me what it is you’re talking about?”

“The thief, the thief!” Thorin snaps, insofar as it is possible to snap while keeping his voice down. Other dwarves are having lunch at the same table, including a considerable number from Thorin’s company, though Fili and Kili are conspicuously absent. “It’s him. Bilbo. He’s the one who’s been stealing from me!”

The only response Balin has to this is a calm, unimpressed sort of blink. “Really? Are you certain it’s him?”

“I found my door under his bed,” Thorin says flatly. “Keeping my shoes company, no less.”

“Ah.”

Something in Balin’s tone makes Thorin bristle, hackles rising as he puts more of the pieces together. “You knew,” he says slowly. “You knew it was him, didn’t you?”

“I did have an inkling, but I wasn’t sure of anything until now,” Balin admits.

So Bilbo wasn’t the only one keeping secrets from him; isn’t that delightful. “You deliberately withheld this information,” Thorin growls, thumping the table with his fist. “The dwarves of old would consider that perjury.”

“Oh, come off it, Thorin.” Balin rolls his eyes as he says this. “I’d have been accusing Bilbo of larceny without any proof or evidence to back my claims up whatsoever! I hardly think you’d have believed me if I told you Bilbo was attempting to court you by stealing your things, would you?”

“That’s not the point! You had a possible lead I could have followed, and —” Thorin pauses, processing the last bit of what Balin just said, and his building anger deflates so quickly he finds himself gaping with unused air. “Wait, what did you say?”

“Bilbo’s been courting you,” Balin repeats in a tone that should, for all intents and purposes, be reserved for speaking with children. “Anybody with the faintest knowledge of hobbit customs would have recognised the signs straight away, mind you.”

“Hobbit customs?” Feeling very, very lost, Thorin leans forward. “What do you mean by that?”

Balin looks way too smug even for a dwarf who’s just succeeded in dodging past charges of minor treason. “Well, you see, Thorin, when one hobbit loves another hobbit very much —”

“Balin.”

“It’s how hobbits court,” Balin says quickly, reading the dangerous look on Thorin’s face. “Stealing things from each other, that is. I’m just amazed Bilbo’s been at it for so long, to tell the truth.”

Thorin narrows his eyes. “Explain yourself.”

“Usually the courtship is noted and resolved by the first few items to be taken — it indicates astuteness and efficiency, you see. Any longer than that and it’s a sign of unworthiness on the part of the one being courted. In this case, that would be you, Your Majesty.”

There are a number of things in there that threaten to offend Thorin’s sensibilities — from the implication of unworthiness to the way Balin slurs his last two words — but it’s difficult to care when he’s warm all over and immeasurably…endeared is what it is, yes, that’s the sensation swelling his heart despite his best interests to be rational. It still sounds well silly, which is just a tick away from downright unbelievable, and Thorin’s always been a skeptical dwarf. “You can’t be serious,” he says.

“I’m not lying,” Balin insists. “What purpose would I have for spinning an untruth such as this?”

“You…you could be winding me up,” Thorin says rather lamely.

“Even if I were, you have to admit it’d do you a whole lot of good if you used the spine I know you have and told Bilbo how you feel about him.” When Thorin opens his mouth to interject, Balin shakes his head swiftly. “I’ve seen the way you look at him, Thorin; we all have! It’s not exactly secret.”

“I —” Thorin clamps his lips together, the rest of his protest squashed flat. He’s not sure what else he can say, if there is anything at all that wouldn’t be a implicit confirmation of everything Balin just hit dead-on, blast him.

Balin taps his fork at the edge of his plate and lets out a sigh. “All I’m saying is there’s nothing to lose if you tell the lad. Well, maybe a bit of pride, but heaven knows you’ve got enough of that to go around as it is.”

Choosing to ignore the jibe, Thorin takes a moment to gnaw it over. Bilbo, courting him? Why, he never — and the method of it is almost as ludicrous, sitting entirely out of sorts with him, but as he slowly wraps his brain around Gandalf’s insistence on appointing a hobbit as their burglar at the start of their quest, it makes perfect sense all of a sudden. “I have been blind,” he says, after a minute of saying nothing. “All this while, and I was…could I — can I still salvage this, Balin? Is there any hope at all?”

The grin that Balin gives him is half-amused, half-kind. “Are you still losing things, currently?”

Thorin takes a second to think back. His water jug had gone missing without a trace, just that morning. “Yes.”

Balin turns back to his food, his grin still intact. “I believe you have your answer, then.”

***

Thorin means to tell Bilbo right away, he really does, it being the most straightforward way through, except the right moment doesn’t present itself immediately. There are about a hundred different ways he could inadvertently make a fool of himself in front of Bilbo, and he’s already well-acquainted enough with a good proportion of that number as it stands, so he decides to give it a while longer. In the meantime he starts preparing, because if he’s doing this he’s going to do it right — he reads up on whatever material concerning hobbits he can procure, has long stretches of thinking about how he’s going to drop the bomb, and, in an impulsive stroke of inspiration, even tries his hand at writing poetry. It turns out disastrous and short-lived, and by the time Balin’s managed to compose himself again, it takes an unholy amount of coercion and threatening to enact a moratorium on any of the things Thorin shared with him getting out.

When he thinks it’s as good as it can get, which isn’t very encouraging in and of itself, he finds Bilbo in the palace study.

“I’ve lost something,” Thorin declares loudly at the entrance.

Seated inside on a large chair, Bilbo looks up from the book he’s reading. “Oh, um. Hello, Thorin.”

“It is something of great import to me,” Thorin continues. He sidles in with his hands clasped behind his back, glassing the bookshelves on the way so as to avoid giving himself away with his eyes. “And it is lost.”

“Lost?” Bilbo slips a bookmark between two pages and rises from his chair to walk across the room, meeting Thorin mid-way. The amount of consideration in his eyes would make Thorin queasy under normal circumstances, but Thorin’s determined enough to pull this off such that it overrides his leaping stomach.

He inclines his head. “It has been stolen from me, as a matter of fact.”

To his credit, Bilbo doesn’t so much as blink. “Stolen? Oh, dear. How dreadful!”

“Not so,” Thorin says, moving closer to Bilbo. “I know where it’s being kept, and the identity of the thief besides.”

Bilbo stands his ground, staying still as Thorin goes close enough to feel the warmth of his breath. “You — you do?”

Thorin reaches down to close his fingers around Bilbo’s wrist, bringing the hobbit’s hand up to rest on the left side of his chest, and looks Bilbo in the eyes to do it. His heart is beating so quickly he’s not sure if he can take it, but he moves Bilbo’s hands in small, slow circles until Bilbo flushes and his expression sharpens with abrupt understanding. It’s only then that Thorin lowers his face, lips nearly brushing Bilbo’s forehead as he murmurs, “Will you return what you have stolen from me, thief?”

Everything goes quiet for a while after this as it sinks in. The moment Bilbo giggles is when Thorin veers back, worried that he’s done something wrong. “Really, Thorin. I didn’t take you for the dramatic sort,” Bilbo says instead, an amused lift to his voice.

Heartened by this, Thorin blinks and shakes his head. “I don’t normally — I mean to say that I’m not familiar. I did not know how else to go about this,” he admits. “This seemed…simplest.”

“You could have just told me you loved me back,” Bilbo points out.

Sometimes Thorin hates how right Balin can be. “Is this too much?” he asks, looking down at Bilbo’s hand over where his heart is beating beneath layers of skin and bone and flesh. “I…I thought the metaphor was fitting to the terms of the courtship.”

Bilbo laughs, puts his free hand to Thorin’s cheek and brings him near for a kiss. “It’s enough,” he says. “You’re doing just fine.”

This is all the permission Thorin needs to wrap Bilbo up in his arms, like a gift, and the resulting kiss is harder and hungrier than the first. He runs his hands up Bilbo's spine, can feel him smiling against his lips, and he smiles as well; it’s impossible not to.

“Took you long enough,” Bilbo mumbles into his mouth, shifting slightly in Thorin's embrace. He's smaller to hold than Thorin thought he'd be, but that's alright. There's no less of him to adore for that.

“I am not proud of that,” Thorin allows as he pulls away. He seeps another kiss into Bilbo's temple, nuzzling his curly hair. “But you were not very apparent with your methods.”

Bilbo raises an eyebrow at him. “Thorin, I took your door, if you still remember. I don’t know how much more apparent you think I could have been.”

Ah, yes. That. “It would seem that I have underestimated your prowess at burglary,” Thorin says, frowning. “You must tell me how it was possible you did that. Surely my guards are not as unobservant as that.”

At this, Bilbo hums and knits his eyebrows together, obviously considering. Then, he laughs and snuggles tighter against Thorin, eyes brightened with love. “Maybe some other time,” he says.

Thorin almost argues, settles for a besotted smile instead. Yes, it's fine, he can most certainly wait, especially when there are more important things to see to. Like caressing Bilbo, now that he can.  _Some other time,_ he thinks, and leans in without another word to allow his breath to be stolen away from him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] steal you the sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8753242) by [annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annapods/pseuds/annapods)




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